Kevin Brennan: Good morning, Mr Streeter. We now move to part 4 of the Bill. May I say first that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship? I thank you and Mr Stringer for all the work that you have done so far in helping us to get through and scrutinise the Bill.
New clause 33 stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley. Although she is not in her place at the moment, I am sure that the rest of the Committee would want to join me in congratulating her on her efforts so far as a first-time Front Bencher. I only hope that I can come close to matching her assiduous scrutiny of—[Hon. Members: “Here she is!”] Right on cue, she makes an entrance so that I can complete my compliments for her efforts so far on our behalf and on behalf of the whole Committee in scrutinising the Bill.
New clause 3 is in the name of the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty, but we have added our names to it because we think it a very good one. I hope that we can have a substantial debate about it this morning, because there are some real issues that we need to discuss.
This is quite a chunky clause. Amendments 92 and 93 are probing amendments. We just want to explore with the Minister the meaning of clause 26 and to clarify its implications. I should say at the outset that Opposition Members support the principle that there should not be any distinction between physical and digital copyright infringement, and therefore support the proposal in the clause to equalise the penalties for that kind of infringement.
For the benefit of the Committee, I point out that the penalty for digital copyright infringement will be increased, to equalise it with that for the physical world, from a maximum of two years’ imprisonment to a maximum of 10 years. That makes sense if we are to support the principle of there being no distinction between the two, although in supporting that principle we want to ensure that the penalty is used appropriately. Obviously, we want to hear about that from the Minister in his response.
It could be said that elsewhere in the Bill, because of its unevenness, is the implication that there is some kind of binary between the digital and the non-digital world.  That, of course, is not true when we get into the real world. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, in her excellent scrutiny of the Bill from the Front Bench, has argued that we should have had a properly thought through digital future Bill, given all the issues in play, and that that would have done away with the false division that tends to exist between the digital economy and the general economy.
Instead, we have a bit of a Christmas tree Bill, on which the Government are hanging various vaguely related issues. That is what is in front of us, so that  is what we must scrutinise, but the levelling of the  law on copyright infringement is, I think, a partial acknowledgement of the point about the false division between the digital and the non-digital worlds. However, in increasing the penalty as the clause proposes, we must be sure that we do not leave a window cracked open for unscrupulous operators to be able to intimidate and take advantage of consumers, whom I do not believe the Government intend to target in the clause. I do not think that the Minister intends to target consumers, but he will tell us that in his response.
The issue is largely a matter of wording. Whenever we scrutinise legislation, however, we have to make sure that no aspect of the law is left unclear by muddled phrasing, so it would be helpful to the Committee—this is the purpose of our probing amendments—if the Minister explained the distinction made in clause 26 between
“the owner of the copyright”,
in line 18 and
“the owner of the right”
in line 35. What do the Government intend by the distinction?
Likewise, stakeholders have expressed concerns to all members of the Committee about the potential interpretation of the phrase in clause 26: “the risk of loss”. The Open Rights Group has expressed concern about the Government’s insistence that there needs to be “reason to believe” that infringement will cause loss or “the risk of loss”. Its fear is that that phrase, “the risk of loss”, could capture quite a wide range of behaviour, perhaps beyond the scope of what the Government say they intend. In particular, its concern is the extent to which that phrase will capture file sharing.
By its very nature, file sharing means that shared music, films or books can be further shared. The Open Rights Group’s fear is that the phrase “the risk of loss” could be said to occur by definition from the activity of file sharing. It fears that, unless there is further clarification on that point, the Bill could be used to pursue individual file sharers. The Minister will know that that is not what the creative industries, which obviously have a concern about any infringement of copyright, say that they want. Rather than pursuing low-activity individuals, the creative industries have opted for a more joined-up, voluntary approach in co-operation with ISPs.
The Minister will be very aware of the “Get it Right from a Genuine Site” initiative, which seems to have been quite successful in beginning to change people’s minds and behaviour as individual consumers by taking an educational approach. That has generally been the  preferred approach; the legal approach has generally been reserved for the prosecution of criminal networks and businesses seeking to make a profit out of the infringement of copyright. We know from the “Get it Right from a Genuine Site” campaign that the industry prefers that kind of approach. I think that that is what the Government want—again, the Minister can confirm that—but we want to make sure that that is what clause 26 actually achieves.
If the clause’s intended focus on networks is left unarticulated, there is a fear that so-called copyright trolls could use that fact to intimidate vulnerable consumers. That is why we are exploring the meaning of the clause in these amendments. Copyright trolls specialise in detecting the sharing of online content and sending legal threats to the potential infringers. These speculative and threatening letters are sent in bulk to thousands of account holders after detecting alleged copyright infringement.
Copyright trolls get their profits when a certain number of people are scared enough to respond to those notifications and pay up. Frequently these accusations are incorrect, misleading and sent to account holders who did not sanction any such further file sharing. However, as I understand it, sending that kind of speculative threat to consumers is, unfortunately, perfectly legal. Some are concerned that if the Bill retains the concept of risk of loss, it could aid the trolls by enabling them to argue with more credibility that account holders may face criminal charges and a 10-year prison sentence.
In the Chamber on 8 September, in a debate opened by the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), we heard all about scamming and vulnerable individuals. All parties agreed that the elderly and the vulnerable are a high risk group and that scams threaten
“their financial, emotional and psychological well-being”.—[Official Report, 8 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 507.]
Last month, in the House of Lords, a special Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill Committee was appointed and it has started to hear evidence. When that Bill was being considered, Lord Lucas, a Conservative, said:
“I applaud the Government for helping our businesses avoid unjustified threats but I would like to know what they intend to do to help the granny in the Clapham nursing home who is being threatened by their smaller, nastier cousins with allegations that she has been downloading pornography illegally.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 June 2016; Vol. 773, c. 16.]
I do not know how real his example was, but this is obviously a topical issue about the danger of copyright trolls being able to exploit the provisions in the clause. Clearly, there is cross-party agreement that trolls and scammers target and exploit vulnerable individuals and that that deserves robust condemnation.
I hope the Minister will also clarify what is meant by “the risk of loss” in the clause and put on the record that the law is written to prosecute networks and businesses rather than individual file sharers and that the Government will continue to pursue profiteering copyright infringers while doing something to deprive trolls of their leverage over the vulnerable. In short, will the Minister clarify what is meant by “risk of loss”? Why does line 18 say
“the owner of the copyright”
and line 35 say
“the owner of the rights”?
Is the intention of clause 26 to prosecute individual  file sharers or not? If the Minister can make that clear for the Committee, that will save further debate on the issue.
I turn to new clause 3, also part of the group; it stands in the name of the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty, in my name and in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley. It is appropriate that we should have added our names to the hon. Gentleman’s excellent new clause because the issue is of great importance to the music industry in particular—as the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty will know: he is chairman of the all-party music group. It is entirely appropriate that we should be singing in harmony, from the same song sheet.
I apologise if I go on to say some of the things that the hon. Gentleman is likely to say later in his speech; I am sure he will speak much more eloquently than I. Nevertheless, it is important that the Opposition put on the record our support for the new clause. There is an adage in the music publishing business that he will know: “add a word, take a third” in terms of copyright. In this case, we have added our names to his new clause and stolen the lead vocal. I apologise to him on that score.
The new clause offers a way for the Government to enforce a code of conduct for search engines in relation to sites that infringe copyright. Of course, the issue was in the Conservative party manifesto, which has been much quoted during this Committee; it has become a seminal document for the Digital Economy Bill. We are very grateful that the Government wrote this down, even if they are not carrying it out in the Bill for some reason or other. It is right that we should explore why that is the case. They said:
“We will protect intellectual property by continuing to require internet service providers to block sites that carry large amounts of illegal content, including their proxies…We will work to ensure that search engines do not link to the worst-offending sites.”
Provision of that kind has not been included in the Bill. Everything else has been hung on it, yet that important statement from the Conservative party manifesto does not seem to feature very prominently within the Bill. I suspect that is why the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty laid the new clause in the first place. We will probably return later to blocking in relation to the issues we discussed regarding age verification earlier on in the Bill.
We have an incredibly successful creative industry sector in the UK; it is one of the most successful in the world. It is growing at almost twice the rate of the wider UK economy, and in a post-Brexit Britain—if that is, in my view, the unfortunate direction that we are taking as a country—the creative industries are obviously going to be even more vital and will make a huge contribution towards our being a strong exporting nation. They will also play a huge part in projecting our presence as the United Kingdom to the rest of the world. They are hugely important.
The new clause laid by the hon. Gentleman would help reinforce the creative industries’ prominent international position and encourage more inward investment by providing a means of combatting piracy more robustly. In other words, if the Minister opposed it, he would be unpatriotic. That is absolutely clear, because the issue is   very important to our export industries. I do not think he will oppose it, but it will be interesting to hear what he has to say.
A variety of stakeholders are concerned about this issue, representing many different types of content, but, as I said at the outset, the issue concerns the music industry in particular. I should probably declare an interest at this point: I earned £10.60 last year from PRS for Music for my song writing, on which I have paid the 40% income tax—so whatever net figure we come up with as a result of that.

Kevin Brennan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is within search engines’ ability to change the algorithms. I had always thought that the problem might eventually solve itself, because when advertising is placed next to the results of an online search, the companies whose products and services are being advertised appear next to websites that are run in the shadows, often by criminal networks. Surely reputable businesses with statements  of corporate social responsibility would not want their advertisements to appear next to a search that turned up an illegal website run by some gangsters somewhere in Russia. However, it turns out that search engines do not solely or even principally make their money from advertising; it is data that are valuable to them. As one of my hon. Friends said earlier, data are the new oil. It is the data acquired on individuals through search engine practices that are so valuable and that enable companies to put product placement in their advertising and search engines to tailor searches to individual consumers online. Embarrassingly, that fact once resulted in a Conservative Member criticising a quote of mine on the Labour party website because the advertising content that appeared next to it was to do with dating a certain type of person. The Member in question subsequently found out that the advert had been placed there not because the Labour party was short of money but because that advert was tailored to his personal search activities. Members should beware when making such criticisms.
My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester is absolutely right that it is perfectly within search engines’ power to solve this problem. Some efforts have been made by Google, and they worked for a short time, but a search engine search for widely available music by some of the most popular artists in the UK will still return a lot of illegal results. The hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty may wish to cover that point in his remarks, so I will not go into further detail, but BPI research certainly indicates that.
The voluntary approach is not working. We have seen this movie before; we have downloaded it many times, and it always has the same inconclusive ending. New clause 3 would provide it with an ending to match one of the best last lines in the movies, which is “Shut up and deal.” Any offers from Government Members? It is from Billy Wilder’s great film “The Apartment”; Shirley MacLaine says it. The new clause would enable the Government to say to the search engines, “Shut up and deal,” because there is no incentive for search engines to do so at the moment. We are being helpful to the Minister, as is his colleague. We are trying to put a bit of lead in his pencil, and he should welcome this cross-party effort to ensure that progress is made.
One further point: I have a sneaky feeling that the Minister actually agrees with the new clause, although he will not agree with it today, and will want to make this change to the Bill but to do so in the House of Lords. If my prediction is wrong, I will take it back in due course. The only thing that I would say is that it does not do this House’s reputation any good when Governments behave that way. I accept completely that all Governments do it: they know that they want to make a concession on a Bill, but they decide to do it in the House of Lords rather than the Commons. Ultimately, although we hear all the talk about the House of Lords being such a wonderful revising Chamber, the Government should accept once or twice that hon. Members, including those of its own party, come up with amendments that are perfectly sensible and should be incorporated into a Bill. It would help the reputation of this House if the Government were prepared to behave in that manner.
One fundamental aim of the e-commerce directive was to identify clearly which practices fall within and outside safe harbour defences. Part of the legislation—   article 16, to be specific—encourages member states and the Commission to draw up a code of conduct at community or national level. However, no such code of conduct has ever been drawn up due to resistance by the search engines. They should not be allowed to avoid parts of legislation at the expense of UK creative industries just because they find it inconvenient. The new clause would end the wasting of Ministers’ time in chairing meetings that go nowhere, the repetitive process of rights holders producing proposals and the practice of search engines consistently refusing to comply to combat piracy, thus ensuring that the digital economy continues to benefit both the UK creative industries and the British public.
New clause 33 is the last amendment in the group. Last month, the Government released their annual intellectual property crime report. Some of the trends are quite startling: they reported 33% more illegal TV programming downloads in March to May 2015 than in the same period in 2013—a rise from 12 million to 16 million. The report highlights as a major concern the proliferation of internet protocol TV, or IPTV as it is known, which offers viewers increasingly easy access to pirated digital content. Technological changes have led to exponential growth in this new form of piracy. Android-based IPTV boxes are being loaded with software linking thousands of streams of infringing entertainment, movie and sport content. The boxes are sold on mainstream marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, and through Facebook.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has yet to be updated to reflect the new technology. It offers no effective remedies to copyright owners, who at present can rely only on laws that are not particularly tailored to copyright infringement. The new clause would help prosecute those who pre-load and distribute such devices and make it easier to work with online marketplaces to remove listings by wholesalers of such products.
A central pillar of the Government’s intellectual property enforcement strategy, which was launched earlier this year, states:
“We will comprehensively review all existing methods of legal recourse for IP infringement to ensure they are effective, consistent and proportionate across all IP rights. We also want to ensure that UK business and rights holders continue to have the necessary legal means to protect their IP, as well as ensuring that effective action can be taken against criminality.”
The Government also said that they would consider
“what legislation would be effective in addressing the growing problem of illegal streaming via set top boxes”
and that they would investigate
“the scope for legislation to take action against search engines, ISPs and platforms that facilitate or otherwise support those involved in infringement and counterfeiting.”
That was followed by the IP Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, launching the enforcement strategy in May this year. She set out how the Government were
“looking at new areas where we might need to create new legal tools to tackle new modes of infringement…we will look at the legislation around set-top boxes, and whether we have enough effective remedies to tackle their misuse.”
She stated that the issue of IPTV and set-top boxes accessing infringing broadcasts was well understood by the Government, as was the scale of manufacture and distribution, and she went on to describe how
“these set-top boxes have entered the mainstream consumer market”
and how they are used on a massive scale. She also explained that
“as technology has developed and broadband speeds have increased, it is now entirely possible to receive programmes in high quality over the internet avoiding the use of decoders entirely. Quite simply the original broadcast is captured at illegal data centres that can be located anywhere and is then re-transmitted as streamed signals over the internet. Set-top boxes…are then supplied pre-loaded with apps that can either be used to subscribe to an illegal site or get content for free whilst the site operator generates income from advertising.”
So the IP Minister herself said that something needs to be done about the issue that the new clause addresses. Her conclusion was that
“it is clear that we need some new thinking in this area. The satellite and cable industries and broadcasters continue to invest in better security and enforcement, but it is also clear that the criminals are serious and this sort of organised crime generates huge profits.”
She is absolutely right.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is an unfit vehicle for the prosecution of offences that involve the supply of IPTV devices designed to pirate content. Supply of devices carrying third-party content can be prosecuted but only via much more complicated routes: normally only the police can investigate and prosecute it, under legislation such as the Fraud Act 2006, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the Serious Crime Act 2015. As the Committee knows, police resources, especially IP specialist resources, are extremely limited. The law should be developed to give other bodies, such as trading standards offices, clearer abilities and obligations to prosecute such offences.
New clause 33 would amend section 107(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to create the new offence of supply of devices primarily used to infringe copyright. It is entirely logical to amend that section, which is concerned with
“criminal liability for…dealing with infringing articles”,
but which currently focuses only on physical copies of work and on communication to the public. The new clause would bring trading standards offices into the picture, empowering them to make investigations and to enforce the rules on such devices under section 107(1) of the 1988 Act. To minimise the risk of new and uncertain legal tests, concepts or unintended consequences, the drafting adopts for the most part language used elsewhere in that Act.
Our proposal has a long list of supporters in the industry. We are interested to know whether the Minister thinks it is a good idea, and whether he will consider adopting it. If he is unable to do so, perhaps he will give a much clearer picture of the Government’s intentions and why they believe that the Bill is not the right place to introduce these proper restrictions on the use of new IPTV devices.

Thangam Debbonaire: I rise to speak in support of these amendments and new clauses, and to add a bit of colour and flavour to some of the arguments that have already been made. We often talk  about rights holders, but we need to be aware that behind those rights holders are individual artists, musicians and technical people. It is not just about my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West; it is about the technical people involved in any recording, film or e-book. Many people are involved in those processes, and every time we deny their right to be paid, we are denying them the right to continue working in the way that we would want them to work.
Which of us here has not skipped gaily around the Palace of Westminster, at least in our imagination, with a song in our heart or a tune in our head? Maybe that is just me. Most of us have a favourite film, and we have music at special family occasions. A poem will be read at a funeral and a song will be danced to at a wedding, and all the people involved in producing them need to be paid properly for their work.
There should not be this wild west of a shopping mall where people can access whatever they want for free, without proper provision for reimbursing those involved. Unfortunately, search engines in particular, but also other providers, are allowing that illegal shopping mall to exist, and so artists, writers and others involved in the creative industries are not getting their proper deserts. That is important.
The hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West both mentioned economic value. I emphasise that according to the Government’s own website, the creative industries are contributing £9.6 million an hour to the UK economy. Since we sat down to work, the creative industries have contributed £9.6 million. UK music alone contributes £4.1 billion each year, which is something to think about. The creative industries are growing at twice the rate of the UK economy, at 8.9%, and we want them to continue to grow. We do not want to deny them part of their income—admittedly the minority, but it is still significant.
We tabled these amendments because we need to harmonise copyright and ensure that licensing laws work across the online and offline world. We want to help Conservative Members to fulfil their commitment in the Tory party manifesto, and new clause 3 would help
“the Government to fulfil its manifesto commitment to reduce copyright infringement and ensure search engines do not link to the worst-offending sites.”
We seem to have a degree of cross-party unity on the value of that measure. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, because there is otherwise an absence of a specific provision in the Bill to achieve this.
I want us to make sure that the good examples, such as Get it Right from a Genuine Site, are taken up and followed, to avoid the unfortunate misdemeanours of others, such as search engines that can remain nameless—we can all guess who they are and others may have already mentioned them. It is not okay for search engines to drive—wittingly or unwittingly, but they should reasonably have known—towards illegal sites.
Consumers do not want musicians, film makers and others to be robbed of their just desserts. Mostly, we want to be able to be sure that when musicians have made a piece of music we love, they get properly paid for it. It is incumbent on search engines and others to make sure that that happens, and to use the power we  know they have to create their algorithms to work properly in this respect. We would not tolerate a shopping mall in which signs and property space were given to illegal shops selling illegal goods. This is the equivalent.
I am absolutely convinced that the Minister would want to honour the commitment in the Tory party manifesto to rectify that. On Second Reading, the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) said,
“there may well be a case for including a legal provision encouraging providers to establish a voluntary code.”
He also said:
“we cannot allow Google and other search providers to go on allowing people access to illegal sites.” —[Official Report, 13 September 2007; Vol. 614, c. 785.]
I am convinced that the Minister will want to take up the mantle he has been thrown by the former Secretary of State and I urge him to do so.

Matthew Hancock: As I said, it is for the courts to decide about criminal infringement on a case-by-case basis, but I am making clear that that is unlikely and not the expected outcome in the case of a person who accidentally shares a single file without the appropriate licence. The reason I do not go further and make it absolute is to ensure that the court can make a fair judgment on this, rather than be bound. I want to go further, because there is another important point here about the impact of this on activities that are currently lawful. We do not expect things that are currently lawful to be caught by this change. This is a change in the scope of the sentence rather than in the definition of the offence. I want to make that very clear.
On the second point that the hon. Member for Cardiff West made about the legal distinction between “owners of copyright” and “owners of the rights”, “owners of copyright” relates to the offence of communicating to the public, whereas “owners of the rights” relates to the performer’s right of making available. This is a legal  distinction: they are two separate offences but there is no substantive difference in the meaning of the two. The reason has to do with the legal drafting of the offence rather than the lay understanding of the meaning of the two.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of trolls. I want to be clear that while we understand that some people may receive threatening letters from so-called trolls, we are not aware of any successful court case by these so-called trolls in this area. We do not endorse such aggressive tactics and we understand that this tactic is not widespread, but we will keep it under review.
Going more broadly into the debate that we have just enjoyed, since 2002, when the maximum custodial sentence for copyright infringement was changed, this has clearly been wrong. I am glad that there is all-party agreement on the change to 10 years, but in addition to increasing the maximum sentence, we have recast the relevant offences to include an additional element to the offences, which must be proved before an offence is made out, namely that the infringer intends to make a monetary gain for themselves or another person, or knows or has reason to believe that their actions will cause loss to the rights holder or a risk of loss in money. Amendments 92 and 93 would remove this additional element, but there are several reasons why it should be retained. We should remember that serious incidents of online copyright infringement or infringement of a performer’s making available right already fall within the scope of criminal law, as I mentioned.
It is right that the courts should be able to apply serious sanctions where they are warranted and apply the equivalent sanction to that available for physical copyright infringement, but it is our view that it is important to include the words, “risk of loss” to capture cases where the loss has not yet materialised. We believe that these same scenarios would fall within the current drafting of the offences, which relies on the prejudicial effect, but we have tightened the notion of prejudicial effect following consultation, to be more precise and targeted in the wording being examined today. I hope that satisfies the understandable request by hon. Member for Cardiff West for clarity to be put on the record as to the intent of clause 26.
I now wish to turn to new clause 3 on search engines. We had a serious debate on the impact of search engines. We come from a position of being strong believers in the protection of property rights, and we want to ensure that the UK retains one of the best IP regimes in the world. Without content, there is no IP to protect, so I pay tribute to the BPI’s work: to support take-downs and to make the eloquent case for stronger IP protection. I also pay tribute to the work of Get it Right from a Genuine Site, which does important work in making sure that culturally it is unreasonable—and seen as unreasonable—to take IP without paying for it.
I turn to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) who made an important point on newspaper articles that appear in search engines. We support fair remuneration and we encourage content providers and online platforms to work together on this. This is an issue that has been raised with me directly, and it is pertinent to the debate. We want to encourage investment in new content, and we support returns for investigative journalism and other kinds of journalism, and I hope  we come to a resolution on fair remuneration between content providers and online platforms, in the first instance. However, my hon. Friend’s intervention is noted.
In relation to clause 3, as the Committee knows from the discussion, the Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, has been working closely with search engines and representatives of the creative industries. We are fulfilling our manifesto commitment to ensure that there is a fair return, and the group is currently considering a voluntary code of practice. I agree with the thrust of the arguments made for my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty, who put the case strongly. Our intention is for the voluntary negotiations and the voluntary code of practice to come to a successful fruition, and the people involved in those negotiations will doubtless have heard the argument and understood the strength of feeling on this Committee. Given this ongoing work and the existing remedies for removing or blocking infringement content, I hope that hon. Members will agree that now is not the right time for a broad reserve power.

Matthew Hancock: I care about the substance of getting this Bill through right. There are, of course, important parts of parliamentary process both here and in the other place. Given that the round table discussions are ongoing, including a meeting next week, now is not the right time for the broad reserve power.
New clause 33 seeks to expand the criminal liability to include the supply of IPTV boxes for criminal infringement. As hon. Members will understand from the tone of my remarks, as a strong believer in property right protection, I understand the concern. The hon. Member for Cardiff West referred to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the fact that the Minister for Intellectual Property had committed to making sure that we looked at this, and we have done so. This activity is already covered by criminal law under the Fraud Act 2006 and the Serious Crime Act 2015. The City of London police force is investigating cases. It seized over 500 set-top boxes earlier this year and arrested a man for fraud and IP offences.
There is a danger in the digital world of legislating for a specific technology as opposed to legislating for the offence in a technology-neutral way. I strongly prefer the latter. As the law is already in existence in the two Acts that I mentioned, the best thing to do is to prosecute under the existing Acts, rather than try  to chase a particular technology, which may well be out of date. Our strategy for tackling IP crime includes a specific commitment to developing an understanding of the challenges posed by IPTV, We now need an approach that tackles the problem, rather than just current IPTV set top-box technology, which will no doubt be superseded in due course by future technologies. The existing criminal  offences provide a legislative framework that is broad enough to protect our creative industries. However, I will of course keep this area under review.
I hope Members have been reassured of the work we are doing to make sure we apply the existing criminal law and make sure that intellectual property is protected. I concur with all the remarks made by Committee members about the importance of the creative industries, the importance of supporting content providers and the importance of intellectual property. I hope that with these explanations, the hon. Member for Cardiff West will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan: I am sure the Minister has heard what the hon. Gentleman said and will want to address it in his response. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to point out that Virgin in particular will be affected.
The Government’s reform is well-meaning, but they need to explain how it will not put further pressure on the public service broadcasting compact. They need to answer questions about their long-term plans for television distribution and how this part of the Bill affects that. Public service broadcasters exist for a reason, as an intervention in the market and as part of public policy. We need to ensure that they do not accidentally drift out of existence or into insignificance, and we need to know the Government’s intentions.
In their response to the consultation on the repeal of section 73, the Government said that they do not expect or want to see charges from public service broadcasters to cable operators for their main channel content. If that is so, I ask the Minister in a genuine spirit of inquiry whether there is an argument for the Government to make it clear in legislation that they do not want to see such charges, because at least some of the public service broadcasters do not share that view. None of us believes that a dispute between a major public service broadcaster such as ITV and a major TV platform such as Virgin is in the viewer’s interest.
The amendments are intended to explore whether the Government are sure that they are not risking those viewers ultimately having to pay more than they should for what should be a free public service broadcast. What is the Government’s view on the risk that those viewers could lose that service, at least for a period of time, if a major dispute of that kind arose as a result of the repeal?
Even if the Government can establish that the cashless trade of carriage for content between cable operators and public service broadcasters will continue, other questions still need to be answered. Following the tabling of the amendment, we noticed that the Government have taken our advice on board and launched a 24-page technical consultation, which came out yesterday, on possible transitional arrangements for the repeal of section 73. That consultation acknowledges the possible effects of the repeal on performers’ rights and the potential need for a rights mechanism, which reinforces the point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley in her extremely able contributions: that the Bill was simply not ready for discussion when it was introduced. This sort of thing really should have been done before the Bill came to Committee.
When all that is taken together with all the other reports that my hon. Friend listed in her contributions and the Government amendments that have been published alongside the Bill, one gets the clear impression that the Minister is making it up as he goes along. It is a bit like that Wallace and Gromit film, “The Wrong Trousers”, when Wallace and Gromit are on the rail track and Gromit has to lay the track as they are proceeding, rather than the track already being laid before embarking on the journey. That is the problem with the Bill: the track has not been properly laid and the Bill has been introduced far too quickly, no doubt for some obscure business management reasons buried within the Whips Office. It is unfair of me to mention that because the  hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness cannot respond, but there is undoubtedly some reason of that kind behind why the Bill has been introduced when it is not oven ready.
Given that the Government seem to be taking inspiration directly from our amendments by publishing the technical report, and knowing how closely they follow our advice, I will take this opportunity to give them a few more pointers on topics to consider through the consultation process that we called for in our amendments. There are currently four different distribution mechanisms for television: there is digital terrestrial television, which is used by Freeview, TalkTalk and BT, via YouView; there is cable, which has already been mentioned, in particular around Virgin Media; there is satellite, which is used by Sky and Freesat; and, as we discussed earlier, there is now IPTV, which can be, and is, used legitimately by BT for its own channels.
Each of those four distribution mechanisms operates under a different legislative and regulatory regime with a different basis of carriage of must-carry public service broadcast channels. At the moment, public service broadcast is paid for digital terrestrial television distribution on one basis, and satellite distribution on another, but not for cable or IPTV distribution. Looking back, it is easy to see how that distinction arose. Earlier Governments sought to try to support a variety of platform levels to enable technological innovation—multi-channel TV was only possible in the 1980s via satellite; it had not been previously possible—or to create competition, or both.
Not so long ago, when I was growing up—this will be within the memory of many of us on the Committee—people would ask, “What’s on the other side?” when watching television. My wife is from the United States of America, and when I first said that to her, she said, “What do you mean, ‘What’s on the other side?’ Do you mean on the other side of the television?” She had no understanding of the concept because they had multi-channel platforms much earlier in the United States than we did in this country.
The world has changed radically but those different regulatory regimes exist, which is why our amendment asks the Government to investigate, produce a report on the implications of the repeal and undertake a comprehensive consultation on the future of television content distribution and public service broadcasters. Does the Minister think that there is any danger that in doing this, although it is something to be supported, the Government are just tinkering around the edges, as they have done recently with the technical platform services or TPS regime, which applies only to Sky?
Although the previous Government recognised the problem, rather than having a formal review and update of the regulation, they merely applied some pressure, which, short of legislation, did result in a slightly better deal for public service broadcasters, but the problem is that the terms of that type of deal remain opaque, so it is impossible for us to judge whether it is truly fairer for public service broadcasters. Does the Minister believe that this approach is equitable compared with distribution arrangements on the other platforms? Should that be subject to the report that we are asking the Government to consider producing?
The Secretary of State has had in this area not just powers, but duties. Since the Communications Act 2003, she has been required
“from time to time to review…the terms on which”
must-carry PSB services
“must be broadcast or otherwise transmitted.”
Those duties do not appear to have been exercised properly recently. The TPS regime has not been reviewed by either Ofcom or the Government in a decade. Why not, especially as it was obvious a few years ago that that regime was no longer fit for purpose? When considering section 73 of the 1988 Act, why have the Government ignored the question of PSB distribution arrangements over all distribution platforms? The Bill was a good opportunity to consider all these issues in the round, rather than trying to treat section 73 as an isolated issue, so I hope that the Minister will be able to explain his thinking on that to the Committee.
All this is occurring in the context of viewers changing their habits. They are watching more online and more on catch-up. Those are growing trends, so distribution over the internet—both live, via multicast IPTV, and on catch-up, via unicast—is growing. In its 2015 review, Ofcom framed that as a “threat” to public service broadcasters. It is certainly a change and certainly a challenge to the Government and to regulators to consider how they can best support and enable that shift, to be  a success both for public service broadcasters and  for platforms.
These days, watching television is like the old Martini advert that many of us remember: “Any time, any place, anywhere, there’s a wonderful dream you can share”. That is exactly the way people are now consuming television: any time, any place, anywhere. That is the present, not the future. How do we ensure that viewers can watch the public service broadcast content that they want to, when they want to and how they want to? How can we ensure that public service broadcasters continue to have reach and prominence, which enables them to fulfil their obligations and appropriately reflect their funding? What opportunities are there to draw more people online, perhaps for the first time, to find the high-quality television content available via public service broadcasters?
Online viewing is not a problem; it is how viewers are choosing to watch, and that will continue to be the case. What is a problem is if there is no strategic thought by the Government on these issues at this time of enormous technological and behavioural change. The particular issues in relation to distribution raised by the repeal of section 73 connect to wider and now pressing questions about the public service broadcast compact. Thirty years ago, the terms underpinning the public service broadcasters were clear: they were reserved access to valuable spectrum and prominence on that spectrum. That created valuable and well-funded monopolies, either from advertising revenue or from the licence fee. However, the Committee knows that we have to consider that every aspect of that regime is undergoing rapid change, and the repeal of section 73 allows us to think about that and to consider the possibility that the Government need to do the strategic—